Tuesday, March 31, 2009

One For The Books?

Bemidji State, a liberal-arts school in northern Minnesota, has an endowment of about $12 million. Notre Dame, a somewhat more prominent university in northern Indiana, spent roughly five times that much on athletics last year.

This is why Bemidji State's ascension to college hockey's Frozen Four -- which included a 5-1 rout of No. 2 Notre Dame Saturday -- is one of the greatest upsets in collegiate sports history.

No upset may ever match Chaminade's 1982 victory over Virginia in men's basketball. Virginia entered that game ranked No. 1, while Chaminade had recently lost to Wayland Baptist. Still, it was just a regular-season game.

If one also takes into account the direct impact the upset had on its sport's championship, others rank higher. Michigan's title chances ended in Appalachian State's landmark 2007 football upset. Top-seeded Stanford became the first (and only) team to fall to a No. 16 seed, when it lost to Harvard in the 1998 women's basketball tournament.

The closest parallel to Bemidji State is last year's Fresno State baseball team, which became the lowest-seeded team to win an NCAA title (the Bulldogs were seeded below 48 of 64 teams). But Bemidji State is by far the lowest-ranked team in this year's hockey tournament, plus the Beavers hail from a four-team conference that is in danger of disbanding. So if they keep their run going, they may become the biggest surprise of all.

He ranks the Beavers making the Frozen Four as the third greatest upset in college sports history. That seems like a debatable claim, but if BSU does win the national title, their place in history would be difficult to dispute.